Lessons That Last a Lifetime

No matter what you do in life, you must find the right teachers, mentors and role models. For me, the roles are now reversed as I play professor to a new generation of students.

Recently, author Frank McCourt passed away. His memoir, Angela's Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, and he was the author of two other best-sellers as well as a two-man show that he wrote and performed with his younger brother. But to me, he was always Mr. McCourt, my high school English teacher.

McCourt taught me creative writing and public speaking, skills that have proved invaluable to me over the years. His lessons have followed me through college and graduate school, and I still rely on them now, as a professional money manager and writer. I'm even in the middle of writing a novel and have plans to co-author a play. Once a shy young man with a mild stutter, I am now a frequent guest on television and radio. I owe a debt of gratitude to McCourt for his encouraging me to express my creativity and making me feel comfortable to speak in a public arena.

In college, I took an advanced macroeconomics course at Wharton taught by Robert Shiller. That was early in his academic career; he is now at Yale University and is widely known for his contributions to economics and the financial markets. He is also the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

One of the most important things I learned from Shiller was about economic forecasting. For our term project, Shiller asked us to develop an econometric forecast of many data points, such as unemployment, U.S. Treasury interest rates and GDP. I spent a lot of time on that project, even visiting the Federal Reserve to get more data and insight. (Remember, this was the early '80s, before the accessibility of personal computers and the Internet.) I submitted my forecasts along with a written paper (typed on an electric typewriter) explaining my research, assumptions and conclusions. My predictions were some of the furthest off of the entire class, but I receive and A on the project. My methods and reasoning, Shiller explained, were the best in the class. To this day, I take econometric forecasting with a grain of salt and regard it to be more of an art than a science.